Smart Trucks to manage Organic bin collection

As printed by Local Government Focus - Australia

http://www.loc-gov-focus.aus.net/index.php?view=editions/2008/march/hume.php

Hume City Council's Spatial Waste Collection and Incident Recording System has improved efficiencies and reduced repeat work for the Waste Services Department. The automated incident reporting system for drivers has also streamlined requests for maintenance and other amenity issues.

Located in Melbourne's north, Hume has just over 154,000 residents and around 53,000 waste and recyclables bin collections, and almost 12,000 organic collections.

Prior to this new system, waste vehicle drivers recorded derelict vehicles, overhanging tree branches, dumped rubbish and so forth by writing these on a piece of paper. Additionally, any property where a bin was not placed out, overloaded or had contaminants was also noted down. This was a tedious process requiring additional stopping, hand recording and was not being uniformly carried out by all team members.

If a resident rang to complain that their bin was not collected, a truck had to return and collect it. This additional work had to be done even though the bin may not have been out when the truck passed because the existing system could not prove otherwise.

Like most Councils, Hume City has various collection types such as general waste, recyclables and organic waste. This has brought new challenges along with various reporting issues for each of the collection types.

The Spatial Waste Collection and Incident Recording System uses Hume's existing network centric GIS infrastructure. Once the application was developed the only additional cost for each truck is the acquisition of tablet PC and peripherals such as GPS, data counter and an incident recording box.

Hume's smart trucks

The system that has been installed and trialled in three of Council's waste collection trucks includes:

* real time GPS * bin collector arm sensor * data collector/counter that receives the data from the collection arm * push button Incident Recorder box located close to the driver * tablet PC to display truck's location as well as recording required data.

Council aims to have all 12 of its collection vehicles fitted out with the above by the end of this year.

Push button incident reporting

The Incident Recording Box enables drivers simply to press a button, recording information and times for specific properties such as:

* bin not out * bin contaminated * bin heavy * bin behind car * bin overloaded * dumped rubbish * tree overhanging * inappropriate bin position * derelict vehicle * graffiti.

"The Spatial Waste Collection and Incident Recording System is streamlining workflows of the Waste Services crew and improving the proactive reporting of maintenance and amenity issues at Hume City Council," said GIS Administrator, Recep Alakus.

He said that other key benefits of the new system include:

* map views on tablet PC assists drivers by displaying clear direction and collection route which is particularly useful for emergency and relief drivers * the customer service department can now answer large numbers of queries regarding daily waste collections in a better informed manner * the Waste Services department can monitor daily collection results and plan for future improvements in collection routing * regular reporting of various amenity issues allows the City Works department to carry out required work in priority order.

For further information contact Recep Alakus on (03) 9205 2406.